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Hybrid View

WIP Village

I'm working on the first settlement of my continent as it would probably be at its height a hundredish or so years into its existence. Trying to do this step at a time and actually keep going with it and update in order to get feedback.
Apologies for the really really crappy scan. I'm struggling with my scanner. It insists on leaving shadows on the edges of scans so nothing turns out well.

So far I have the creek/river, the first building ever build (kind of a vikingish long house type thing), and some potential roads. I'm hoping to ink this after I've finished the drawing, but we'll see where it goes.

If going for a viking theme the few town layout examples I have seen suggest a grid layout with a couple of houses per "block" and fenced yards wasn't uncommon. I don't know if that was the norm though - I've seen examples of saxon and viking villages surrounding a great hall having a far more irregular layout too. I dunno if that information is of any use to you. =P

If going for a viking theme the few town layout examples I have seen suggest a grid layout with a couple of houses per "block" and fenced yards wasn't uncommon. I don't know if that was the norm though - I've seen examples of saxon and viking villages surrounding a great hall having a far more irregular layout too. I dunno if that information is of any use to you. =P

Thanks. Not going for Viking perse, just a culture that I envision having viking/saxon-esque qualities. But that helps with my struggling decisions to figure out if it should be planned or haphazard.

I decided to start with the "old town". I figured that from the creation of the grand hall, they would slowly begin to build themselves houses, and they would start out a little more separated. I will probably give more of them fenced yards of some sort, but I also imagine that over the years space would be consolidated so that the buildings aren't as spread out as they started. I envision the centre of "town" shifting away from the great hall, as it becomes less central and society builds to include commerce.

Will this village include a religious building (some sort of temple, maybe even a church) ?

If yes, it would look good to place it a bit seperated from the village, with its own farmstead nearby.

Some of the buildings are placed quite regularly, especially near the bridge; in my opinion it would look better if the small buildings are arranged to farmsteads of round or rectangular shape.

By the way:
It is sometimes very useful to look at settlements which still retain the social structures which are comparable to 'our' (European) ones in the middle ages. For example, there are quite interesting street (and plot) layouts at the southern part of the city of Akordat, Eritrea, Eastern Africa, where you can still find small plots of irregular shape on a random street pattern.

Will this village include a religious building (some sort of temple, maybe even a church) ?

If yes, it would look good to place it a bit seperated from the village, with its own farmstead nearby.

Some of the buildings are placed quite regularly, especially near the bridge; in my opinion it would look better if the small buildings are arranged to farmsteads of round or rectangular shape.

By the way:
It is sometimes very useful to look at settlements which still retain the social structures which are comparable to 'our' (European) ones in the middle ages. For example, there are quite interesting street (and plot) layouts at the southern part of the city of Akordat, Eritrea, Eastern Africa, where you can still find small plots of irregular shape on a random street pattern.

I see what you mean by the irregular plots. That is fascinating. I'll try some more irregular shapes in with the more standard ones. Right now I'm working on placing the earlier farmsteads, so I can place in the newer constructions based on what was originally there.

I'm trying a few different configurations for the houses and yards now. The larger yards make more sense to me, but I don't know if it will match my scale and population. I can always scale down my population, though.

Good progress!
One thing I haven't tried but think might solve the problem with your scanner would be to place the page inside a border that has very high contrast colours and shapes to it. That would (theoretically) help calibrate the optics in the scanner head. Worth a try.